This week ConservAmerica hosted a lunch forum for congressional staff on ways to incentivize the voluntary clean-up of orphaned hard rock mines. The briefing featured presentations by key stakeholders, including Tawny Bridgeford, with the National Mining Association; Chris Wood, with Trout Unlimited; Jonathan Wood, with the Property and Environment Research Center; and Steven Cook of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

At issue is the environmental clean-up and restoration of the roughly 500,000 abandoned (non-coal) mines scattered across the United States. Taxpayers pay for remediating the most toxic sites through the Superfund program, but limited federal funding makes the clean-up up of these sites a daunting task.